Black Death 2010 Christopher Smith

I guess it's been long enough since Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  Now people are finally ready for a serious movie about the Plague.  Unlike The Seventh Seal or The Virgin Spring, though, this one's in color!  Now you can see all of the black boils and seeping wounds just like in real life!  Feel the filthiness come off the screen and into your lap!  Good times.

In this one, Sean Bean leads a God appointed task force to find villages that don't have the plague and wipe out the witches and devils that live there, so all the good God fearing people can get the plague like God wants them to.  He and his team are good at their jobs, but not so good at directions, so they stop at a local abbey and ask for a monk to lead them to this super remote witch village in order to pillage, kill and spread God's word and disease.  But of course, things don't always go as planned, even when you're on God's side.

This movie is pretty good.  There are a few shots that echo Virgin Spring & Seventh Seal, but nothing as obvious as playing chess with Death.  The heathens are appropriately creepy and enticing, and God's chosen knights aren't exactly the most pious bunch of executioners.  The deaths are gory and inventive.  Maybe it's just me, but I always like to see a good drawing and quartering (at least I hope it's not just me...that would be weird....)   Anyway, if you're in the mood for a medieval drama that's full of death and squalor, this is the movie for you.  It's not even very funny, at least intentionally.